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Sine wave generator test

A project log for Microcontroller based curve tracer

Electronic Curve tracer for measure and compare components on circuit boards

mt-tthMáté Tóth 02/05/2017 at 17:451 Comment

Recently I had not too much progress on the V2, but on this weekend I made one of the main part of the curve tracer, which is the sine wave generator. On the Version 1, I did it with a simple solution, with a transformer, which give me 12V 50Hz sine wave. It was good for basic things, but if you would like to measure electronic components with series or parallel with inductance or capacitans, you have to use higher frequancy. At higher frequancy inductive and capacitive parts shoud act differently.

This is the reason, because you have to use a variable frequancy source, to drive your front end electronic. I would like to have 6 or more steps on the frequancy range like the minimum is around 50 (60)Hz and the maximum is up to 1.5 - 2kHz.

As you can see in the video, I did managed to do the electronic, and it is more than capable to make the sine wave up to 10-20Khz, if have to.

I had some difficulty to set up the generator, because sadly I have not get an oscilloscope yet. So I had to do it differently, like I did on the Version 1, I modified the code to act like a simple oscilloscope, because if you think of it, a Curve tracer is a dual channel oscilloscope in X-Y mode, so the arduino is basically an oscilloscope in this project.

After all, I was able to develop one channel with it, so I will just have to copy the other channel from the first one and it is ready to go. It can measure a sine wave up to 1.5-2kHz so it is in the ideal range. (If I have to I will use some ADC accelerator code)

In the video the signal was free running, because I not use any trigger function. I programmed 2 main menu, which you see at the start, and that one where you can see and set the values for the Voltage, Resistance and to the Frequancy.

The left upper button is the menu button, the next to it is the Voltage selector button. When you selected a menu, it show you on the leds and on the screen which menu you ar in. The up and down button is light up that direction where you can set the value. Like if you are 0 on the voltage value it is only showing the up button with the led.

At this state where the project is, I have not figured out if I have to isolate the Arduino DUE (measure and contorl unit) from the sine wave generator completely or not, but I think I might be.

I also changed the code and now the display is smoother than before on the Version 1.


Discussions

PROFESOR wrote 02/05/2017 at 18:13 point

Hi Mate, Very nice Project. Waiting full version.

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